181535
on israel's (s)election methods by Tim Wise ------------- 181059 Zionism,
as its been practiced for the past 54 years, especially since 1967, reflects
and re-enforces, in word and in deed, our arrogant, imperialist civilization.
by Chief Bromden A favorite rererepost ------------------ The Israeli
Jewish Settlements Making The Desert Bloom - With Destruction -------------
181535 Understanding The Israeli Palestinian Conflict For The Average American
(english) Tim Wise 1:14am Tue May 21 '02 article#181535 Israel bars any
candidate from holding office who thinks Israel should be a secular, democratic
state with equal rights for all. ** PLEASE CIRCULATE ** Defining Democracy
By Tim Wise Webster's New World Dictionary defines democracy as, among
other things, "the principle of equality of rights, opportunity and treatment,
or the practice of this principle." Keep this in mind, as we'll be coming
back to it shortly. Now, imagine that the United States were to abolish
our Constitution, or perhaps had never had one to begin with. No Bill of
Rights. No guarantees of things like free speech, freedom of assembly and
due process of law. And imagine that Congress were to pass a law stating
that the U.S. was from this point forward to be legally defined as a Christian
nation. As such, Christians would be given special privileges for jobs,
loans, and land ownership. Furthermore, political candidates espousing
certain beliefs--especially those who might argue that we should be a nation
with equal rights for all, and not a "Christian nation"--were no longer
allowed to hold office. And imagine that next month, new laws were passed
that restricted certain ethnic and religious groups from acquiring land
in particular parts of the country, and made it impossible for members
of ethnic minorities to hold certain jobs, or live in particular communities.
And imagine that in response to perceived threats to our nation's internal
security, new laws sailed through the House and Senate, providing for torture
of those detained for suspected subversion. This, on top of still other
laws providing for the detention of such suspects for long periods of time
without trial or even a formal charge against them. In such a scenario,
would anyone with an appreciation of the English language, and with the
above definition in mind, dare suggest that we would be justified in calling
ourselves a democracy? Of course not: and yet the term is repeatedly used
to describe Israel--as in "the only democracy in the Middle East." This,
despite the fact that said nation has no constitution. This, despite the
fact that said nation is defined as the state of the Jewish people, providing
special rights and privileges to anyone in the world who is Jewish and
seeks to live there, over and above longtime Arab residents. This, despite
the fact that said nation bars any candidate from holding office who thinks
Israel should be a secular, democratic state with equal rights for all.
This, despite the fact that non-Jews are restricted in terms of how much
land they can own, and in which places they can own land at all. This,
despite that fact that even the Israeli Supreme Court has acknowledged
the use of torture against suspected "terrorists" and other "enemies" of
the Jewish state. For some, it is apparently sufficient that Israel has
an electoral system, and that Arabs have the right to vote in those elections
(though just how equally this right is protected is of course a different
matter). The fact that one can't vote for a candidate who questions the
special Jewish nature of the state, because such candidates can't run for
or hold office, strikes most as irrelevant: hardly enough to call into
question their democratic credentials. But of course, the Soviet Union
also had elections, of a sort. And in those elections, most people could
vote, though candidates who espoused an end to the communist system were
barred from participation. Voters got to choose between communists. In
Israel, voters get to choose between Zionists. In the former case, we recognize
such truncated freedom as authoritarianism. In the latter case, we call
it democracy. If it was not already obvious that the English language was
dead--what with the inanities introduced to it by the business-speak of
corporate capitalism, such as "thinking outside the box," "managing one's
human assets," and "planned shrinkage"--this should pretty well prove the
point. If what we see in Israel is indeed democracy, then what does fascism
look like? I'm sorry, but I am over it. As a Jew--hear me now--I am over
it. And if my language seems too harsh here, that's tough. Because it's
nothing compared to the sickening things said by Israeli leaders throughout
the years. Like Menachem Begin, former Prime Minister who told the Knesset
in 1982 that the Palestinians were "beasts walking on two legs." Or former
P.M. Ehud Barak, who offered a more precise form of dehumanization when
he referred to the Palestinians as "crocodiles." And speaking of Barak,
for more confirmation on the death of language, one should examine his
April 14 op-ed in the New York Times. Therein, Barak insisted that democracy
in Israel could be "maintained" (ahem), so long as the Jewish state was
willing to set up security fences to separate itself from the Palestinians,
and keep the Palestinians in their place. Calling the process "unilateral
disengagement," Barak opined that limiting access by Arabs to Israel is
the key to maintaining a Jewish majority, and thus the Jewish nature of
the state. That the Jewish nature of the state is inimical to democracy
as defined by every dictionary in the world matters not, one supposes.
Barak even went so far as to warn that in the absence of such security
fences, Israel might actually become an apartheid state. Imagine that:
unless they institute separation they might become an apartheid state.
The irony of such a statement is nearly perfect, and once again signals
that words no longer have meaning. They are but the sounds that emanate
from one's throat and are accompanied by breath and occasionally spittle.
They mean nothing. Define them as you choose. Interestingly, amidst the
subterfuge, other elements of Barak's essay struck me as surprisingly honest:
much more honest, in fact, than when he had been Prime Minister and supposedly
made that "generous offer" to Arafat about which we keep hearing. You know,
the one that would have allowed the maintenance of most Jewish settlements
in the territories, and would have restricted the Palestinian state to
the worst land, devoid of its own water supply, and cutoff at numerous
chokepoints by Israeli security. Yeah that one. The one that has been described
variously (without any acknowledgement of the inconsistency) as having
offered the Palestinians either 93%, or is it 95%, or maybe 96%, or perhaps
98% of the West Bank and Gaza. Well, in the Times piece, Barak finally
came clean, admitting that Israel would need to erect the fences in such
a manner as to incorporate at least one-quarter of the territories into
Israel, so as to subsume the settlements. So not 93 percent, or 96%, or
98%, but at best 75%, and still on the worst land. Furthermore, the fences
would slice up Jerusalem and restrict Arab access to the Holy Basin and
the Old City: a direct swipe at Muslims who seek access on a par with their
fellow descendants of Abraham. That this was Barak's idea all along should
surprise no one. And that such a "solution" would mean the final loss for
the Palestinians of all but 17% of their pre-Israel territory will likely
not strike many in the U.S. media or political elite as being terribly
unfair. If anything, we will continue to hear about the intransigence of
the Arabs, and their unwillingness to accept these "generous offers," which
can only be seen as generous to a people who have become so inured to human
suffering that their very souls are in jeopardy. Or to those who have never
consulted a dictionary. For once again, it defines generous as: "willing
to give or share; unselfish; large; ample; rich in yield; fertile." In
a world such as this, where words have lost all meaning, we might as well
just burn all the dictionaries. Sometimes, the linguistic obfuscation goes
beyond single words, and begins to encompass entire phrases. One such example
is the oft-repeated statement to the effect that "Jews should be able to
live anywhere in the world, and to say otherwise is to endorse anti-Semitism."
Thus, it is asked, why shou't Jews be able to settle in the West Bank,
Gaza and East Jerusalem? Of course, whoever says such a thing must know
of its absurdity beforehand. After all, the right to live wherever one
chooses has never included the right to live in someone el's house, after
taking it by force or fraud. Nor does it include the right to set up house
in territories that are conquered and occupied as the result of military
conflict: indeed, international law expressly forbids such a thing. And
furthermore, those who insist on the right of Jews to live wherever they
choose, by definition deny the same right to Palestinians, who cannot live
in the place of their choosing, or even in the homes that were once theirs.
Needless to say, many Palestinians would like to live inside I's pre-1948
borders, and exercise a right of return in order to do so. But don't expect
those who demand the right for Jews to plant stakes anywhere we choose
to offer the same right to Arabs. Many of these are among the voices that
insist Jordan is "the Palestinian state," and thus, Palestinians should
be perfectly happy living there. Since Palestinians are Semites, one could
properly call such an attitude "anti-Semitic"--seeing as how it limits
the rights of Semitic peoples to live wherever they wish--but given the
transmogrification of the term "anti-Semitism" into something that can
only apply to Jew-hatred, such a usage would seem bizarre to many, one
suspects. The rhetorical shenanigans even extend to the world of statistics.
Witness the full-page advertisement in the New York Times placed by the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which
ran the same day as the Barak op-ed. Therein, these supposed spokespersons
for American Judaism stated their unyielding support for Israel, and claimed
that the 450 Israeli deaths caused by terrorism since the beginning of
the second intifada, were equal to 21,000 deaths in the U.S. from terrorism,
as a comparable percentage of each nation's overall population. Playing
upon fears and outrage over the attacks of 9/11, the intent was quite transparent:
get U.S. readers to envision 9/11 all over again, only with seven times
more casualties! A brilliant move, indeed. But of course, honesty--an intellectual
commodity in short supply these days, and altogether missing from the rhetorical
shelves of the Conference of Presidents--would require one to point out
that the numbers of Palestinian non-combatant (that is to say civilian)
deaths, at the hands of Israel in that same time period, is much higher,
and indeed would be "equal to" far more than 21,000 in the U.S., as a comparable
share of respective populations. To be honest to a fault would be to note
that the 900 or so Palestinians slaughtered with Israeli support in the
Sabra and Shatilla camps during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, would be
equal to over 40,000 Americans. Even more, the 17,500 Arabs killed overall
by Israel during that invasion would be roughly equivalent to over 800,000
Americans today: the size of many large cities. In the dictionary such
a thing might fall under the heading of terrorism. But remember, words
no longer have any meaning. Sounding eerily like Adolph Hitler, Ariel Sharon
once said, "a lie should be tried in a place where it will attract the
attention of the world." And so it has been: throughout the media and the
U.S. political scene, on CNN in the personage of Benjamin Netanyahu, and
in the pages of the New York Times. And in my Hebrew School, where we were
taught that Jews were to be "a light unto the nations," instead of this
dim bulb, this flickering nightlight, this barely visible spark, whose
radiance is only sufficient to make visible the death-rattle of the more
noble aspects of the Jewish tradition. Unless we who are Jews insist on
a return to honest language, and an end to the hijacking of our culture
and faith by madmen, racists and liars, I fear that the light may be extinguished
forever. ------====------ http://warnow.blogspot.com/ LECHA
DODI - TIME TO SIGN OFF Well, it's the Sabbath Day once again, time for
me to quit the Internet and stop blogging for 24 hours. As always, here's
something substantial and religious to sustain you until I return. It's
a drash I gave one Rosh Hashanah. Shabbat shalom! *** Rosh Hashanah is
a time for new beginnings. A time to take stock and look to the future.
Often we find ourselves emphasising our past. It’s a glorious past, certainly.
We are an old faith, one of the last living remnants of the ancient world.
The Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Phonecians, the Romans – all dead.
But not us. Should we take pride in our survival? It certainly beats extinction.
But survival seems to have become a mantra in the modern Jewish world.
There are endless commissions, committees, surveys and reports all with
the goal of enhancing Jewish survival. But I sometimes feel we’ve got things
backwards. All this talk about how to ensure our survival, the methodology
to be employed, how many trips to Israel our children need, how many hours
a week of Hebrew language and Jewish studies they require in order to guarantee
they won’t marry a non-Jew…it’s all a bit mechanical and depressing. And
it doesn’t even work. The fact of the matter is that we live in a peaceful,
free, open democratic society where we face little or no genuine threat.
And there’s no point in trying to coerce people into staying Jewish. In
this society we have complete freedom of choice. There’s simply no possibility
of erecting higher and higher walls around us, to cut ourselves off from
other people. And nor should we. Judaism is not a hermit religion – we
are commanded to be in and of the world, to change it, and make it better.
The mission of Israel, to bring about the messianic era for all the world,
is not advanced if we crawl into a hole and pull it in after ourselves.
If we constantly talk about using Judaism as a tool to ensure our survival
– in other words if we make simply staying alive our ultimate goal and
consider religion a useful mechanism to achieve that, we will in fact be
dooming ourselves. The Torah is not a spade to dig with. We exist as long
as we keep the faith. Am Yisrael exists to serve Judaism, not the other
way around. Once you have the why, the how pretty much takes care of itself.
Without the why, no amount of how will help us, and we will die. Which
brings me to the subject of death. In the central story of Judaism, we
fled Egypt and its cult of death. We fled its oppression, its dehumanisation
and its idol worship. Egyptian society was centered on death. Life to them
was merely a preparation for the afterlife. The Pharaohs raised massive
pyramids to house their remains after death. But our purpose is centered
on life and freedom and the infinite possibilities of existence. The story
of the Exodus, our national origin myth, sees us breaking the unchanging
cycle of time and showing that history could have a direction and a purpose,
rather than endlessly repeat the patterns of the past. But is that they
way we see our faith today? I believe that tragically, many of us have
gone down the wrong path and adopted another, grimmer story. The events
of the 20th century are still too close to us for a proper perspective
perhaps, but it is clear that there is a kind of cult of the Holocaust
that has sprung up. It acts as a sort of civil religion for many of us,
a “master story” not unlike that of Exodus. But what does this story tell
us? That Jews are fated to be persecuted, and our ultimate goal must be
survival by whatever means necessary? Rabbi Michael Goldberg, in his book
“Why Should Jews Survive: Looking past the Holocaust toward a Jewish future”
says some Jews believe that because of the Holocaust, we can count neither
on God nor on other, non-Jewish human beings to make Jewish existence safe
in the world, a world that will never cease to be hostile to our existence.
“So, in the final analysis, this belief leads to three inescapable conclusions:
There is no God, humanity is incorrigible, and the world is irredeemable”.
That is not Judaism, but its opposite. This is the danger, that by placing
suffering and death at the heart of modern Jewish life we are sanctifying
mere survival, instead of service to God, as the purpose of Jewish life.
But this is illogical. That Jews will survive we need never doubt--unless
we doubt that there is a God who makes and keeps promises. But if we doubt
that, then why care about Jewish survival at all? In fact, these doubts
amount to a form of atheism. The emphasis on the Holocaust and on physical
survival instead of service to God alters Judaism's most fundamental precept
and rewrites its central prayer, the Sh'ma, to read "you shall love survival
with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your might." If we reject
our covenant with God, with a higher purpose and meaning for our lives,
then our survival is meaningless, a physical fact without transcendent
importance for history or for God. Why did Lot’s wife turn into a pillar
of salt? Because she was commanded not to look back at the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah, but did so. She turned her face to the past, and
was frozen with horror, unable to turn towards the future. There is a story
that she cried so hard that the salt in her tears crystalised around her.
In Judaism, we have laws relating to mourning, very good laws, designed
to allow for stages of grieving. But they are also designed to gradually
bring the mourner back into life again, into the life of the community.
The shiva period, the shloshim, reciting Kaddish for a year and then the
yartzheit each year on the anniversary of the death – these are ways in
which we acknowledge our grief, without allowing it to overwhelm and destroy
us. Children cannot be raised in a house of perpetual mourning. One cannot
make a home in a cemetery. It is impossible to make our way to our future
if we perpetually march on a road of bones. We cannot live if we place
suffering and death at the center of our existence. The past is important.
But the future is more so. And great and glorious as our past is, our future
will be even better, if we can turn our faces towards it. Our task, the
mission of Israel, is to bring about the redemption of the world. The entire
world, not just ourselves. The world needs Jews. It needs creative, playful,
dedicated, thoughtful, radical, conservative, skeptical, rational, pious,
loving Jews, Jews of all kinds. Jews like us. What it doesn’t need is a
Judaism that has been frozen into a pillar of salt. We have faced terrible
things in the past. We will probably face them again in the future. But
we have no reason to fear for our existence while we remain faithful to
the covenant. Do you see this scroll in the Ark behind me? When we read
“In this scroll is the secret of our people’s life from Sinai until now”,
I believe that. No guns, no chains, no dungeons or secret police can prevail
against the ideas it contains, provided we remain true to the covenant
with God, in whatever way we choose to imagine that God – supreme being,
ultimate reality, or meaning and purpose in life. A long time ago we were
told that we had a choice between life and death, blessing and curse, and
were urged to choose life. That choice remains for each of us to answer,
in our own way. Choose life – and have no fear. posted by | 6:50 PM Comments
[5] ---------------------------- THE AGE CATCHES THE FORTUYN BUG Poor old
Pim - he's a real hit now he's dead and can't enjoy it (and you just know
how hugely he'd love all this attention). This morning's Melbourne Age
catches the zeitgeist nicely, with an op-ed piece by Pamela Bone that starts
off a little gingerly, but eventually gets into the swing nicely. She can't
work out if Islam is left-wing or right-wing (we really have to ditch that
terminology, it's starting to get in the way), but eventually she decides
that there are aspects of it she just plain doesn't like, and says so.
Which is something of a breakthrough, given the self-imposed shackles of
political correctness in most of the media. It's as if any publically expressed
unease with any aspect of an ethnic group's existence automatically turns
you into a genocidal lunatic. I'm not up for gratuitous ethnic smears -
I support a multi-ethnic community as a worthwhile ideal. Nor do I fancy
assimilation. Completely replacing your religious or ethnic identity with
another is impossible and immoral. Acculturation, however, is just fine
and dandy and probably neccessary. I suspect that where Europe is turning
right it is doing so in large part because it is trying to preserve its
hard-won left values. It is not right wing to deplore religious fundamentalism,
to worry that one's daughters or granddaughters may one day live under
a regime like the Taliban, to fear the mindset of suicide bombers. "Christianity
and Judaism have gone through the laundromat of humanism and enlightenment,
but that isn't the case with Islam," Fortuyn wrote. More than one eminent
essayist has made the similar point that Islam needs to go through its
own "reformation". Some brave Muslim scholars have said there needs to
be a reinterpretation of some passages in the Koran, as have Muslim feminists.
Some have had orders sentencing them to death imposed as a result. Good
to get that off your chest Pamela? It gets easier with practise. Stand
by for the "racist... neo-fascist...inappropriate... un-Australian" letters.
When they appear, I'll put excerpts up here, especially if any of them
use actual arguments rather than name-calling. Pamela Bone has also written
a good piece about left-wing anti-semitism, called "It might be an ugly
war, but a Palestinian holocaust it is not" which is also worth reading.
====>>>>> It might be an ugly war, but a Palestinian holocaust it is not
By Pamela Bone April 23 2002 Have the Palestinians the moral right to say
Hitler was right about the Jews?" an e-mail correspondent asked last week.
He was not, I think, asking me to answer this question. It was in an "open
letter" to John Howard and Alexander Downer, sent on to me from one Marian
Kaluski, who says he (or she) is chairman of an organisation called "Australians
Against the Israeli Occupation of Palestine". Even if the letter, castigating
the Australian Government for its alleged one-sided support of Israel,
did not contain lines referring to "the sickness in the Jewish soul", or
asserting that "the vast majority of the Jews have always been enemies
of non-Jews and Christianity", the words in the subject line would have
given it away: "letter to a Jewboy". So now there is an excuse to hate
the Jews again. Of course it is possible to criticise the response of the
Israeli Government to Palestinian suicide bomb attacks without being anti-semitic.
Indeed, some of the harshest critics of the Israeli policies are Jewish.
Kaluski quotes them approvingly, as if to lend credibility to his argument,
which, summed up, is that there is no difference between the Nazis' treatment
of the Jews and the Israelis' treatment of the Palestinians. Is it really
necessary to point out that there is a difference? I fear that it is, because
this claim is being heard more and more. The Nazi holocaust was as clear
an example of genocide as history has known, perhaps paralleled only by
the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda. In both cases an attempt was
made to wipe a people from the face of the earth. However pitiful the plight
of the Palestinians, however reprehensible the way the assault on the Jenin
refugee camp was conducted, however wrong the occupation, and however disastrous
the election of Ariel Sharon has proved for Israelis and Palestinians,
no Israeli government has ever intended to wipe out the Palestinian people.
The rise in anti-Jewish feeling around the world is scary, not only for
Jews but for anyone with a memory. It is not unexpected in some Arab countries,
where dislike of Jews has long been close to the mainstream, and where
people do feel great solidarity with the Palestinians. In one Egyptian
newspaper, Hitler was recently referred to as "Hitler of blessed memory".
In a survey of Islamic countries, 62 per cent of respondents believed Jews
carried out the September 11 attacks on America. But across Europe, too,
the attacks on Jewish schools, synagogues and shops are the worst since
World War II. There have been similar attacks, though to a lesser extent,
in Australia. Yet even here the muttering is growing louder. Some is based
on the traditional sympathy, especially on the left, for the underdogs,
who are undoubtedly in this conflict the Palestinians (though I don't know
how confident and superior Israelis can be feeling at the moment, knowing
their children might be blown up on the school bus any day of the week).
But at least some of the solidarity expressed towards Palestinians is based
more on the premise that "my enemy's enemy is my friend" than any real
concern for the plight of the Palestinians. So-called peace marches are
not about peace at all but about expressing anger towards Israel - and
often, by extension, towards Jews. And yes, the media - particularly the
electronic media, which has less ability to analyse - does seem at times,
to me, to have an anti-Israel bias. Israel's incursions into Palestinian
territory are invariably "Israel's bloody incursions". How bloody is a
restaurant in which dozens of young people have been killed by a suicide
bomber? How does Israel (or indeed the rest of the world, given the propensity
of suicide to be imitated) protect itself from people who believe that
to kill oneself and as many others as possible is good and glorious? When
I wrote on this page recently that Muslim women should not be teaching
in Australian taxpayer-supported schools with their faces hidden behind
a veil - an opinion I still hold - it was Jewish women who castigated me
and upheld their right to do so. It is Jews who are disproportionately
represented in anti-racism organisations, in human rights bodies, in philanthropy.
It is my Jewish friends who remind me that there is a lot of racism in
Israel too; that there are many Palestinians and Israelis striving to work
together for peace; that the situation in Israel is extremely complex;
that it is largely about competing victimhoods; and that any movement,
including support for Palestinians, is likely to draw in some strange bedfellows.
Jews can perhaps take comfort that at least part of the criticism of Israel
is due to double standards. The world seems to have higher moral expectations
of the Israelis, just as it had higher expectations of white South Africans
during apartheid. But this is merely another form of racism. And there
are terrible lessons from history to show where it can lead. Pamela Bone
is an associate editor of The Age. E-mail: pbone@theage.com.au ----------------

- conservative Christian
anarchism From: "Kermit Snelson" Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 12:32:03 -0800
In-reply-to: <200203181607.LAA30598 @bbs.thing.net> Reply-to: nettime-bold@nettime.org
John Armitage: > Isn't it about time we all stopped playing along with
this > silly game? For the record, PETER LAMBORN WILSON IS HAKIM > BEY
-- the 'Prince of Liteness'. ---------------- Yes, but the great American
historian Henry Adams demonstrated back in 1907 that any true doctrine
of "spiritual anarchism" like PLW's revolutionary Sufism requires exactly
two personas. Adams himself was one of two members of "the wholly new and
original party of Conservative Christian Anarchists," whose mission was
"to restore true poetry under the inspiration of the "Götterdämmerung."
[1] Here is his explanation of the "two persona" principle of spiritual
anarchism and how it relates to the underlying critical/dialectical method
of "the will to be-against": This wing of the anarchistic party consisted
rigorously of but two members, Adams and Bay [Bey? - KS] Lodge. The conservative
Christian anarchist, as a party, drew life from Hegel and Schopenhauer
rightly understood. By the necessity of their philosophical descent, each
member of the fraternity denounced the other as unequal to his lofty task
and inadequate to grasp it. Of course, no third member could be so much
as considered, since the great principle of contradiction could be expressed
only by opposites; and no agreement could be conceived, because anarchy,
by definition, must be chaos and collision, as in the kinetic theory of
a perfect gas. Doubtless this law of contradiction was itself agreement,
a restriction of personal liberty inconsistent with freedom; but the "larger
synthesis" admitted a limited agreement provided it were strictly confined
to the end of larger contradiction. Thus the great end of all philosophy--the
"larger synthesis" was attained, but the process was arduous, and while
Adams, as the older member, assumed to declare the principle, Bay Lodge
necessarily denied both the assumption and the principle in order to assure
its truth. [2] Having shown the dialectical necessity of both the "two
persona" principle and the "will to be-against" in spiritual anarchism,
Adams goes on in the next paragraph to anticipate Negri's exhortation to
"push through Empire to come out the other side": Adams proclaimed that
in the last synthesis, order and anarchy were one, but that the unity was
chaos. As anarchist, conservative and Christian, he had no motive or duty
but to attain the end; and, to hasten it, he was bound to accelerate progress;
to concentrate energy; to accumulate power; to multiply and intensify forces;
to reduce friction, increase velocity and magnify momentum, partly because
this was the mechanical law of the universe as science explained it; but
partly also in order to get done with the present which artists and some
others complained of... [3] Toward those who objected to this doctrine,
Adams directed this thundering retort: Of course the untaught critic instantly
objected that this scheme was neither conservative, Christian, nor anarchic,
but such objection meant only that the critic should begin his education
in any infant school in order to learn that anarchy which should be logical
would cease to be anarchic. To the conservative Christian anarchist, the
amiable doctrines of Kropotkin were sentimental ideas of Russian mental
inertia covered with the name of anarchy merely to disguise their innocence;
and the outpourings of Elisée Reclus were ideals of the French _ouvrier_,
diluted with absinthe, resulting in a bourgeois dream of order and inertia.
Neither made a presence of anarchy except as a momentary stage towards
order and unity. Neither of them had formed any other conception of the
universe than what they had inherited from the priestly class to which
their minds obviously belonged. With them, as with the socialist, communist,
or collectivist, the mind that followed nature had no relation; if anarchists
needed order, they must go back to the twelfth century where their thought
had enjoyed its thousand years of reign. The conservative Christian anarchist
could have no associate, no object, no faith except the nature of nature
itself; and his "larger synthesis" had only the fault of being so supremely
true that even the highest obligation of duty could scarcely oblige Bay
Lodge to deny it in order to prove it. Only the self-evident truth that
no philosophy of order-- except the Church--had ever satisfied the philosopher
reconciled the conservative Christian anarchist to prove his own. [4] It
may interest some to know that Henry Adams, the author of these lines,
was respectively the grandson and great-grandson of the sixth and second
Presidents of the United States. Kermit Snelson Notes: [1] Adams, Henry,
_The Education of Henry Adams_, 1907, p. 405 http://xroads.virginia.edu/
~HYPER/hadams/eha27.html ---------------------